By statically compile the code, I mean link it statically. If you look up several topics, this was a suggestion given by matsp to avoid any conflicts between the operating system that I am using on my desktop, which is openSUSE, and the operating system running on the PC104, which is a copy of Gentoo Linux.
From what I have been doing, it seems like the libcxcore libraries on the two systems are incompatible. So a dynamically linked program compiled on one machine using opencv will not work on the other.
I have tried statically linking the code using -static, only to get an error saying that libcxcore could not be located. So, I went back to the copy of opencv 1.0.0 that I obtained from sourceforge.net, gave a /configure --enable-static instruction that told make the statically link the opencv libraries after compiling, then ran make clean, make, and make install.
The result installed things like libcxcore.a onto Linux, allowing my program to recognize opencv when I statically linked it. Unfortunately, it now would not recognize several other things, including libdc1394. libraw1394, and gtk. I have libdc1394 and libraw1394 source code from sourceforge.net, so I can just do the same thing I did with them that I did with opencv. Unfortunately, gtk either came with the Linux install or was installed through YaST as a dependacy, and I lack the source code to do the same with it.